“The SEC should bring back the short sa…

“The SEC should bring back the short sale uptick rule” (Savage last night) is about as insightful of a comment as “I wish GM would start making great cars like the ’57 Chevy again”…. Should I explain why or am I beating a dead horse? The very brief version is that rule only made sense if stocks are trading controlled by a single person standing in one place on a physical floor who has seconds to make a decision. Today, trading is done by computer with 100s of matches a second. Humans are not in the process any more. When the SEC banned short selling briefly in 2008 it had no effect. Selling Short has always not been allowed on stocks less than $5, and that didn’t stop Lehman’s stock price from continuing to fall. Don’t kill the messenger.